Table of contents for July/August 2019 in Adirondack Explorer

Debts cloud resort plan The developers of the proposed Adirondack Club and Resort at Big Tupper were successfully sued by their attorneys and must pay their legal team $9 million, according to court papers. The case against Preserve Associates LLC, also known as Tupper Lake Preserve LLC, reveals the unpaid bills for legal services and discloses that the lawyers say the charges are justified in part because the controversial project has increased in value to more than $200 million by the developers’ own appraisal. MORE ON ADIRONDACKCLUB AND RESORT Preserve Associates has been pursued by their team of attorneys for payment on legal work done over 12 years of their relationship. Winning the judgment is the large Albany firm Whiteman, Osterman and Hanna. The firm is owed more than $8.2…

Photographer Carl Heilman takes readers on a journey through his mountains in his newest book, “The Trails of the Adirondacks.” Released this spring by the Adirondack Mountain Club and Rizzoli International publishers, it is part of a series highlighting hiking trails across the country. Heilman was asked to provide hundreds of photos of Adirondack trails and destinations. Neal Burdick, the editor of the Adirondac, ADK’s magazine, was brought onto the team later to write the text. Unlike other books in the series, which feature single trails, Burdick wrote about multiple trails. “You can’t talk about one trail in the Adirondacks,” Burdick said. “I needed first to explain the Adirondacks a little bit because there’s so much. They’re just not like any region in the country. They’re not like any other…

Eric Kreckel fixes his stare at the road ahead. He leans over his handlebars and sees black bordered by green. He sees possibilities. “‘Can’t’ isn’t in my vocabulary,” he says. As he trains for his second Ironman Lake Placid this summer, he knows he is not a typical triathlete. In some ways, Kreckel is like the other 3,000 who registered to spend a day swimming 2.4 miles in Mirror Lake, biking 112 miles through the High Peaks and running 26.2 miles among Olympic venues: He knows he’s a crummy swimmer. He knows he’s a strong biker. He knows he’s an OK runner. But he also knows he’s in pain before he puts on his wetsuit; his hands and legs are numb before he gets into his bike shorts; his brain…

The array of Adirondack environmental advocates requires a program for outsiders to keep straight. A dozen major organizations will spend more than $15 million this year—most collected from contributors or members—to help protect ecosystems, waterways, wildlife and recreation from environmental threats. They also advocate with state authorities responsible for the 5.8-million-acre Adirondack Park, almost half of it constitutionally protected state-owned forest preserve. Conservation advocates championed creation of the park and the preserve, and convinced lawmakers and governors to double the size of both over the next century. Some groups formed more recently, citing gaps they say need addressing. The latest, still filing some of the required paperwork for nonprofit status, is Adirondack Wilderness Advocates, established two years ago by three outdoorsmen, saying someone needed to speak for designating the new…

Railroad sells scenery, not solutions Michael Virtanen’s (May/June) article on the Adirondack Railroad was a good update on the current status of this long-running debate. I wish, however, that Virtanen had challenged the railroad officials a bit more about the idea of the railroad as a solution to the vehicle congestion in the High Peaks. One does not hike Cascade Mountain starting from the Lake Placid railroad station, so a car would still be necessary to get to the trailhead. And the notion that the railroad could “siphon off” some of the users by dropping them at a trailhead along the way ignores the fact that there are not very many trailheads on the rail corridor. There are a few more paddling put-ins, but making frequent stops to leave off…

While climbing Wright to bag my first of the 46 High Peaks, I couldn’t help but notice several pairs of birds, invisible in the lush, hysterically chartreuse leaves of early spring, calling back and forth to each other from what seemed a few inches away at most. My hiking partners asked impatiently if we could continue up the mountain rather than stand in the same spot while I searched in vain for the invisible birds. On the hike down I heard them again and saw one quickly flit along a branch perhaps 30 feet away and 10 feet over my head, and then it started singing and sounded, duh, like two birds alternately singing a very similar note. When ornithologists conducted genetic studies of the solitary vireo complex, they discovered…

A few years ago, while standing atop Mount Colvin, the temptation to add Nippletop Mountain to an already long day nagged at me. I had never hiked Nippletop, nor Dial Mountain, on the same ridge, a couple of 4,000-footers that had long been on my must-hike list. Other 4,000-footers, like Mount Colvin, always seemed to trump them. Nippletop (4,620 feet), the 13th-highest peak in the Adirondack Park, especially intrigued me. A prominent landmark as one drives up the Northway from the south, this silent sentinel always welcomed me back to the High Peaks from trips to Albany and beyond. It’s obvious why Orson “Old Mountain” Phelps, the legendary Adirondack guide in the 1800s, popularized the mountain’s name. Its summit ridge has a distinct bare nipple of rock. The mountain’s humorous…

Moriah Town Board Member Matt Brassard spent much of the late spring and early summer knocking on doors in the blue-collar communities of Mineville and Witherbee in the eastern Adirondacks, trying his best to save residents millions of dollars. It was a surprisingly hard sell, and his struggles foreshadow a challenge next year when Adirondack communities will need an accurate head count to get their share of government help and representation for the coming decade. The federal government had offered Moriah some $8 million in the form of federal grants and no-interest loans for an upgraded public sewer system that is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency. The town must do the work whether it receives financial assistance or not, and if it doesn’t, the residents will be forced to…

Adirondack communities are tackling a grocery divide. Drive around the park and, upon quick glance, it appears much of the health and wealth of a community can be determined by the access residents have to groceries in general and in particular fresh, healthy foods. After grocery store closings in communities across the region, grassroots initiatives are sprouting to build a stronger local food system and improve access to fresh foods for all residents, at the same time harnessing the strengths of the blossoming local food scene. Fresh options for Indian Lake Communities that lack close proximity to grocery stores are commonly known as food deserts. The USDA broadly defines food deserts as “areas that lack access to affordable fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk and other foods that make up…

For the past 44 years a small group of hardy volunteers has encamped each May on the peninsula at the Crown Point State Historic Site in the shadow of ancient forts—ground where Samuel de Champlain, Benedict Arnold, Ethan Allen and great Native American chiefs once trod. MORE PHOTOS Their mission over two weeks is to capture as many birds as they can, affix a tiny, identifying bracelet to their delicate little legs and release them to complete their journey to wherever they might be journeying. Each bird, more than 20,000 to date, is carefully measured, sexed and catalogued, sometimes to be discovered again hundreds of miles away. The Crown Point Bird Banding Association is a relaxed and knowledgeable coterie of volunteers who spend the days checking the nets, entertaining…

On a bank of the Ausable River’s West Branch, just upstream of its confluence with the East Branch in Au Sable Forks, this spring’s high water deposited a large twisted sheet of rusted steel, looking like a beached whale, opposite the Tahawus Cultural Center. Rebecca Kelly, who runs the center with her husband Craig Brashear, invited me over to see it. “It’s part of the penstock,” I told her. “There was a flattened section in the pool below the dam.” I was surprised it had moved so far, roughly a mile—though it may not be the same piece I saw upstream last year. There could be other sections of this 7-foot-wide steel pipe in the river, gradually moving downstream, just as the river holds other artifacts of the mills that…

Who’s there?” The opening line of “Hamlet” was the question my wife, Debbie, and I asked ourselves upon buying a sagging old camp and 18 Adirondack acres along the Saranac River. The property was ecologically diverse. It included upland and wetland, as well as northern hardwood forest, riverbank, floodplain, stranded oxbow ponds, and a mossy, boggy, all but impenetrable stand of spruce, fir and tamarack. As naturalists, we were quick to wonder. What lived there? What sort of plants grew, and what sorts of animals, fungi and other life forms lived on and among them? What flew overhead? What burrowed in the soil? Questions multiplied as we rolled up our sleeves and began writing down the scientific and common names of the things we found on index cards. Our first…

Adirondack paddlers have had much to celebrate in recent years as the state’s acquisition of former Finch, Pruyn lands has opened up spectacular waterways to the public, including Boreas Ponds and the Essex Chain Lakes. But another land deal two decades ago did as much, perhaps more, for canoeists and kayakers. At the end of 1998, Gov. George Pataki announced that the state had struck a deal with Champion International to conserve 139,000 acres in the Adirondack Park. Most of the land would be protected by conservation easements allowing sustainable forestry, but the state would buy outright portions of eight river corridors in the northern Adirondacks. Twenty years ago this August, these waterways were open to the public for the first time in more than a century. To celebrate the…

The woodlands of eastern North America support the richest diversity of salamanders in the world, with more than a quarter of the 730-plus species. A dozen species occur in the Adirondacks, and one—the small (3- to 5-inch) eastern red-backed salamander (“redback”)—is our most abundant terrestrial vertebrate species, with densities exceeding thousands per acre. As such, they play a significant role in nutrient cycling and in the carbon cycle. If you’ve ever turned over a log in the Northeast woods (and, I hope, returned the log to its original position), chances are you’ve seen this cool species. Redbacks occur from Minnesota to Nova Scotia and south to North Carolina and belong to the largest salamander family, the Plethodontidae or lungless salamanders. They respire through their skin, which necessitates living in moist…

Minimizing Campfire Impact It’s hard to beat a campfire on a summer night, but it’s important to consider its impacts on the environment. The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics recommends that people consider whether it’s appropriate to build a fire, whether its allowed, and the current wildfire danger. If a fire isn’t appropriate, use a stove for cooking. Use an Existing Fire Pit Location is another consideration. “If there’s already a designated fire pit, it’s ideal to use that fire pit because the area has already been impacted,” said LNT master educator Tyler Merriam, a manager at Adirondack Lakes and Trails Outfitters. If there’s no fire pit, use a site that is gravelly, rocky or sandy. But Merriam doesn’t recommend building a new pit because the top layer…

On May 2, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 231-190 to pass its first climate bill in nearly a decade. Known as the Climate Action Now Act, it urges President Donald Trump to remain in the Obama-era Paris climate accord and take steps to reach its emissions goals. It is nowhere near as wide-ranging as the Green New Deal advanced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who nonetheless voted in favor of Climate Action Now. “I think we need to support whatever action on climate that we can get,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I certainly think that we need to do more, and it’s not about any one bill.” Perhaps a more significant vote in favor of Climate Action Now came from another New York representative, Elise Stefanik, one of only three House…

It’s always a bit of a surprise when you look down at a trail register and see “We saw a bear!” scribbled in the notes section of the last entry. That’s what happened when I started my hike at Cook Mountain on a Saturday in early June. Immediately several thoughts raced through my mind when I saw the note. “Too bad I left my telephoto lens at home” came to mind, as did “I doubt I’ll see it anyway.” And then a short distance into the trip, I pretty much forgot about it. There have been plenty of times I’ve been hiking when bears had been spotted on my projected route. Rarely do the animals reappear. Plus, in this case, the sighting was the prior day. It was likely…

Those of us who are of a certain age and rural upbringing are no strangers to mountain biking. Except we didn’t call it mountain biking. We called it, if we called it anything, ripping down a forested hillside at truly stupid speeds, hopping logs, dodging white oaks and leaping off duff embankments after innocently telling our moms that we were “going for a bike ride” as she nodded her somber approval. Nearly a half-century later, trail builder Eli Glesmann of Rock Solid Trail Contracting is arranging similar (although far more sophisticated and artistic) obstacles on the slopes of McCauley Mountain in Old Forge for the Adirondack Foothills Trails Association, a nascent organization whose accomplishments belie the fact that it’s only been in existence for about a year. In the time…

Three thousand lakes and ponds providing the Adirondack Park endless beauty, recreation and, in some cases, drinking water, are in more danger than ever of being contaminated with non-native species that don’t belong in this part of the world. New York State has a chance to stop an inevitable spread by making boat washing mandatory and not a voluntary, “reasonable precaution” taken by boat owners. And the state Department of Environmental Conservation should lock down two state boat launches in the towns of Ticonderoga and Hague after hours—matching all other public and private launches on Lake George—to close the loopholes on what is otherwise the park lake best-protected against aquatic invasive species. Right now, most Adirondack lakes still have not been affected. Invasive—or non-native species that cause economic, ecological or…

What’s better than the challenge of using one fly to fool and land as many trout as possible over a weekend? Well how about two flies? That’s how Wilmington’s Whiteface Mountain Regional Visitors Bureau has lured generations of anglers over the last 20 years to the Adirondacks for its Ausable Two-Fly Challenge. The contest has given motels and restaurants a reason to open a week before the Memorial Day rush ever since the storied Jackson Hole One Fly fishing tournament denied Wilmington’s organizers the use of its copyrighted name. Ausable River Two Fly Shop owner Tom Conway recommended allowing anglers two flies for Wilmington’s version, and a name was hatched (first for the event, and later for the angling shop he would open near the riverbank). As the name implies,…

One of the Adirondack Park’s biggest boosters had never even visited before moving here almost 40 years ago. In fact, her only trip to the U.S. from her home in Nova Scotia before then was her family’s quick drive across the bridge to the U.S. side of Niagara Falls, just to say they’d been. Now we know Joanne Kennedy from her photos featuring Adirondack wildlife and landscapes published in the Adirondack Mountain Club’s Adirondac magazine, her monthly column in the Plattsburgh Press-Republican, “Navigating Nature,” and her book, “Leave Only Footprints: A Walk on the Wild Side–Adirondack Style.” And if you’re one of the lucky recipients of a handmade gift from Kennedy, you’re familiar with her quilting, stained-glass work and her Adirondack pack basket weaving. Energetic and compact, Kennedy travels the…

We received some great reader-submitted photos for the Something Fishy theme of Views of the Park. These photographers will each receive a free one-year subscription to the Adirondack Explorer. We will be switching up our photo feature from this reader-generated Views of the Park feature to a new format. Look for an announcement in the upcoming issue.…